Daddy world

The second week of June is the most anticipated week for me. 

It involves three things..

1. Kids graduation from school.. or like we used to say when we were kids "last day of school"!

2. Father's day

3. Our wedding anniversary

We did the last day of school on Wednesday and it was special this year because Jr. finished Elementary school and moves to middle school next year.

This also marks a huge gap when the two girls will be in the same school. In the US we have 6th to 8th grade as Middle school and 9th to 12th grade as high school. In three years when the little one goes to middle school, Jr. will already be moving out of that school to high school. 

The last year of school for Jr. will be the next time they are both in same school and that is 6 years away. So we are back to two pickups, two drop offs and different school timings etc. Our hope is that Jr. becomes more responsible and starts walking or biking to middle school! 

Now.. Father's day is always nice. My kids give me the extra huggies and kissies and this year I already have my gifts. The school has a limit to creativity (and budget) for the father's day gifts. So guess what the little one gave me?

Same Frog! well, it does not seem to have any storage value given the small mouth but the little one tells me it is a paperclip holder.. Well, now my office will have two frog paperclip holders! Funny thing is I wont know who made what because they both have the same initials and they both were in Room 12 for 2nd Grade! 

(Note for posterity : one on left is Little One, right is Jr's)

They also make me nice cards which really make my day! This year they put a lot of effort into it and was really happy to read /see what they gave me..

I did not get the boat and the caption first..

till she told me that I had to flip the flags over to see which my "Jobs" were!

As you can clearly see, my jobs are all non critical functions which involve the fishes and plants. In other words, I am a "Uppukku chappani" or the twelveth man in a cricket team. Nevertheless, yours truly is happy to play any role as part of the crew! 

The letter was clear but "What in Perumal's name is a woodly?" I asked and the reply was :

Daddy, I really wanted to say "you are cuddly like my cuddle bear, but what can I do?! There is no C in AWESOME! so I changed the W to say Woodly instead of Cuddly!" .  While the concept is baffling to me, the way she said it in all seriousness with her hands waving wildly will stay in my mind forever. 

Next was Jr's turn and she gave me this nice heart and card to put in my office! 

She painstakingly created the logos for the Yoga studio, my work etc and put them there. The cartoon of me on a yoga mat with a small water bottle cracked me up! 

They have both promised to behave their best tomorrow to celebrate Father's day.. will hold them to it, given yesterday evening and most of today was a blur with yet another migraine. Feeling good now after all that sleep. Daddy day promises to be interesting!

As for the third thing that makes our week, we have our Aussie relatives visiting us and it has been a blast! So we celebrate with a larger family this year!

Here is a video of me dancing with the little one and her cousin at a local restaurant.. 

It is just great to see the kids happy! 

We have now crossed two 7 year itches and still "itching for each other".. so that must be a good thing! There are no secret presents planned for San this year.  When the whole NSA Prism scandal came out, I realized that San knows every little move I make.. she has all the passwords for the credit cards, amazon, ATT sites etc. and I have none. No wonder I can never surprise her with anything!  

Maybe I will handcraft her a card that says "You are my NSA and I still love you!"

Happy Father's day to all the dads out there!

Another Kindergarten Graduation..

Just when you remember writing a post about how time flies, you are writing it again, three years later, with another kid going through the same thing!

We remember talking about this in 2008 and saying "before we know it the baby will be finishing Kinder!" and there she is!

Have never seen her happier!

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Busy week

A lot more things happened this week, than the adults watching Dasavatharam!

Jr. finished Kindergarden. One more year just flys by!

Here is this years Photo. Jr. was so proud and happy. It was a treat to see her prepare for her graduation performance, singing, dancing, having fun!

One more year of married life completed this week! We are happy, healthy, constantly fighting, constantly reconciling after fighting, managing to maintain the status quo for another year. Time IS really flying by fast.

As though to symbolize this event, we had a special flower bloom in our front yard. Thought it was just an ornamental non-flowering plant when we purchased it six months ago. Now we know better.

The flower bloomed over a whole week gradually. It was amazing!

and as if to say, "yeah right!" for the association of the flowers blossoming to our wedding anniversary, another flower bloomed!

It looks like an Allium, but seems to say "pOda ....."

Let us see if you can guess what flower this is!

And finally, Father's day! A very special day for me because Jr. always makes my day! The first thing she did when she woke up was to run to me and say "Happy fathers's day daddy" and she gave me a bookmark. She had kept it a secret for a whole week. The little one still doesn't understand what the hoopla was about, but joined in the hugging and kissing.

An eventful week this one! Guess, going forward we will have the second week of June becoming a busy week because of the Graduation, fathers day, anniversary combination!

Wishing all those dad's out there a very happy Daddy's day!

ps. After reading last years post on Jr.'s graduation, I just realized.. This Blog completes another year!!!

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Random Photos..

It is pretty late in the night (by middle aged daddy standards).

So why not let the mind wander and just pick some photos from the last few days and post them ?

First, a nice graduation shot of Jr. thanks to another parent's camera.

Next a tip for people who suffer migraines in the middle of a hot summer afternoon. If you ever said to yourself, "If only I could chill my head", I have the perfect tip.

1. Take some crushed ice in a Ziploc (or other local brand name) resealable plastic bag (the sandwich size bag works best).

2. Wrap it in our Indian towel(aka thundu). This does not work with the turkish bath towels!

3. tie it around your head so that the crushed ice bag ends up just above your neck in the back of your head, and lie down so your head is pressed against the pack and in a few minutes, the headache is gone! At least this works for me.

Actually the last three pictures were taken in reverse sequence. San took a picture of the "sick me", and that prompted me to take the other two pictures as I unwrapped the towel.

Finally, to complete the randomness(?!), a picture of a squirrel at our local park, which took off just as I had him in focus..

I did not know that squirrel ears were that intricate. Did you ?

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The time, it keeps on flying..

As a person who skipped Kindergarten completely and went to first grade at the age of 4, the whole hoopla about a pre-Kindergarten graduation ceremony for Jr. sounded crazy!

Graduation party ? For graduating from what ? Playing in the yard ?

Add to that the timing of the party at 10:30 in the morning on a weekday, there was no way I was attending the ceremony. Jr. came and gave me the extra special hug and kiss and practically begged me to come. I still had to disappoint. San however relented and went for an hour. Apparently the ceremony was a huge success. All the parents were teary eyed that their little ones were now graduating from the daycare and moving on to different schools to attend KG.

In a way, I guess it is fitting to have some kind of graduation, because making it through all that playing in the yard, knowing your ABC's and 123's is an accomplishment by itself. All that hype with the gowns, tassels and caps are a little too much, but maybe even that is for the better ! They get used to the graduation ceremony concept at an young age.

The only problem was that San took the old S30 to take pictures.
San suffers from a not so rare disease called newmachineophobia where the symptoms are :
initial fear of touching new machine
expectation of extensive hand holding in terms of using said machine
learning to love the machine
hogging the machine
forgeting that they actually were afraid of the machine at one time
declaring that they always were okay with the machine

The beauty of this disease is that it cures itself. We have seen her go through this with the car, the van, new DVD players, cameras, camcorders, etc. Now she is going through it with the new Canon EOS! So she took the S30, which failed to open its shutters during the ceremony! Now we are waiting for photos from cameras of the other parents who were present, so I can get glimpses of what happened at the ceremony.

To compensate, I took a photograph of the little one with her hat..

Now, that is something to get all teary eyed! My little baby is all grown up..

In other news, this blog graduates after its second year and on to its third! Let us see if can go on for another year!

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